


Execution

by Tallihensia



Series: Execution 'Verse [1]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-28
Updated: 2009-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-03 23:17:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tallihensia/pseuds/Tallihensia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex Luthor is in prison, about to be executed for his crimes against humanity. Or is he? ... 200 years in the future, can Lex and Clark come to a reconciliation when their past is long behind them?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Execution

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams. ;-) This story was written for free entertainment purposes only and may not be reproduced for profit or altered without permission.
> 
> [ ](http://danceswithgary.livejournal.com/308466.html)   
> _Awesome cover by danceswithgary :)_

# Execution

He was in a maximum security prison cell, with a broken leg in a plaster cast (casualty of the explosion) and yet they never took off the chains on his wrists.  They were afraid of him.  Despite all their precautions, despite his basic humanity, they were still afraid.  As they should be.  He was Lex Luthor, and it pleased him to see the security guards slink around nervously, jumping at the least scrape of a chair or rattle of a chain.  They had x-rayed him and strip-searched him when bringing him in, and were still so frightened that they repeated the procedure every day. 

The prison had even planned to deny him his last meal, afraid of what he would do with it.  But he wanted it, if only to get one more knife twist in with his eternal battle with Superman.  So he used the few connections he had left, and got a message to the superhero. 

  


"You want what?"

"I want an apple pie from the online service of 'Homegood Treats dot com'."  Lex grinned, the twisted politician grin he liked to use when screwing somebody and they couldn't do anything about it.  Superman knew that look well.

Superman stared at him for a while, maintaining a very carefully blank face but the eyes needed some more work.  Lex had had a part in crafting that face, teaching the young man over the years how to not reveal anything to your enemies, or even more especially, those you thought were friends.  He was proud of the blank face – the superhero had learned it well.  But the eyes... the eyes, when they shaded green, they left the mask of the hero, and they still showed some of the boy within.  Somebody who had never really grown up, never quite learned all his lessons, and still wanted to believe in miracles.  Lex sneered at those eyes, ridiculing and mocking what they held.  "I don't think you have to worry about a file in the pie, but you're welcome to x-ray it, as long as it's still warm when it arrives."

With a sigh that was barely noticeable, Superman turned to the warden. "I'll bring the pie.  Luthor can have his last meal, if that's what he wants."

"From my favorite chef?"  Lex twisted it a bit further.

Barely a pause, but to someone who knew those green eyes, it was a meaningful pause.  "Yes, Lex, I know what you want."  And there were layers of meaning behind the sentence; another thing he'd taught the boy over the years.  A swirl of red cape, and Superman left the prison, leaving Lex to be taken, still chained, back to his cell.

  


Luthor waited through the night, but the guards were careful, there were superheroes flying around outside the prison, and most of his immediate contacts were dead.  That last battle had claimed his Valkyrie, taking his battle angel from him, his only Mercy.  She would have done anything to get him out.  But without Mercy... .  Lex wasn't sure how much he really wanted to try anyhow.  Superman won that round, perhaps this time he would give him the war as well. 

The last time Luthor had been in prison, convicted of murder, he'd escaped on his own, destroying most of the prison, and adding several more charges to his list.  He went back to managing LuthorCorp and his experiments, laughing at the bunglers who had him and let him go.  He sat in plain view, and thumbed his nose at them.  Fools, to not kill him while they could.  But even fools learned from their mistakes.  This time, they didn't bother waiting for trials or lawyers or any of the legal things he could twist to any circumstance and use to delay for other plans.  This time, they used his old charges, the older proceedings, and received a special dispensation to move quickly, setting his execution date for barely a week after they captured him.  Personally, Lex thought they were setting a dangerous precedent if they wanted to be the good guys; there was a fast, slippery slope from where they were to summary executions with no trial.  But if they wanted to go down that path, far be it from him to point out their mistakes.

  


An hour before his scheduled execution, a warm, still steaming, pie was set before him.  It was a perfect golden brown, with those slight variations that showed it was home-baked instead of factory-produced.  A slight sprinkling of cinnamon.  The shine of the melted baked apples through the decorative air slits on the top.  And a familiar scent.  Once, a beloved scent.  A long time ago, these pies had been a treat, something special, something more than a pie.  Now?  Lex brushed a finger over one corner of the pie where there was a slight discoloration.  Like a salty water drop had fallen there.  Or a tear?   No, it was surely only a pie.  There couldn't be anything else left, after what he had done.

Normally, he shoved such thoughts out as quickly as they came in.  They were unproductive and sentimental, a pair of traits that were weaknesses.  But now?  What did he have to lose, an hour before he died?  Lex ate the warm pie, wallowing in the murky past of 'what if' and 'what might have been'. 

  


They led him into the glass-chambered room with the straps and chains on the chair.  It was to be lethal injection, not gas or shock, but they also were taking no chances.  He was, after all, Lex Luthor.  His death would be solitary on the inside, prepared and with contingencies for any variation.  Watched like a guinea pig by the onlookers on the other side.  His witnesses to assure the world that the last Luthor was indeed gone.  Some reporters, some guards, some politicians, some superheroes.  All waiting to make sure his death was permanent this time.  Lex wondered that they didn't also have a bag of salt at the door, and a pentagram sketched around the chair.  Burn the body, mix the ashes, scatter to the winds.

While he waited for them to be ready, Lex looked through the glass and felt real surprise for the first time in a long time.  The spandex representative was Wonder Woman, and the reporter... was Clark.  There was no evidence of primary colors or blue eyes.  Instead, a set of green eyes hidden behind awkward frames met his, the colors bleeding out to anguish, regret, fear, and unsteady resolve.  That... was unexpected.  Lex had thought it would be Superman to watch him die.  That it would be his rival, his enemy, the one who had brought him down and to 'justice'.  Instead... instead, it was Clark.  Even after all these years, meeting those green eyes with the proper amount of distain was hard.  It was easy with the costumed alien whose disguise stood for things that didn't exist in a real world – truth and justice?  Please.  Those were simply convenient fairy tales; rules that other people should follow but didn't apply personally to heroes.  The world didn't live in black and white, which is what Superman stood for despite his red and blue.  But Clark... Clark knew about shades of grey, even if he wouldn't admit it.  And those shades were evident right now.

"Are you here to write my eulogy?" The mocking was almost reflex.  A strong jaw, disguised by the lines of eyeglass frames, tightened as Clark kept back an answer.  Lex knew his buttons, though.  "Or to make sure something goes under my latest tombstone?  It can sit next the other five.  If the city won't pay for it, there are some extra funds provided to the cemetery for it."

Clark actually blinked at that.  Lex grinned.  Oh yes, the funds had been there for the last ten years or more.  And Clark was authorized to draw upon them, though he never had.  There was a first time for everything.  "You can put, 'here lies the greatest villain, beloved of Superman.'"

The jaw tightened again but this time loosened for words.  "I was thinking of carving, 'The death of legends.'"

That surprised Lex so much that he threw back his head and laughed out loud.  It was a genuine sound, not contrived nor tinged with anything except amusement and appreciation.  "The *stuff* of legends, Clark; the stuff of legends.  If you're going to quote, get it right."  How very, very appropriate. 

He met Clark's eyes again, without the hate that normally tinged their interactions.  And Clark took a breath, stepping towards him, stopped only by the glass between them.  Clark put his hand up in a gesture that closely resembled a certain movie, once a favorite of theirs, though Clark probably wasn't thinking of that.  Lex took a step of his own, shaping his hand into a v-pattern with his fingers, but the guards yanked him back, guns coming out and even some of the lasers, all trained on him, ready to kill.  Ironic that they didn't fire, considering what they were about to do.

Lex moved his eyes from Clark to the warden, raising an eyebrow and his grin returning to the familiar mocking pattern.  It was flattering, really, how much they would do to ensure his death, and how frightened they were of him.  The warden scowled and motioned his people to get on with it.

They hauled him to the chair and went through the laborious process to transfer his chains without endangering themselves.  The leather bit down over his wrists as it was tightened, but Lex wouldn't give them the satisfaction of knowing it hurt.  On the other side, a movement caught his eye and he looked up in time to see Clark flinching, guilt flooding through his features before he controlled himself and wiped the expression off.  For a moment, Lex was puzzled, but then he glanced to the straps in understanding.  Clark had memories that he didn't.  And Clark blamed himself for things that Lex didn't.  Not that, at least.  That rested all on Lex's father, and his father was long dead.  Lex really *had* salted the body, just to make sure.  And put a stake through the heart after the funeral but before the burial.  One just couldn't be too careful, with Lionel Luthor. 

The warden was making the usual long speech, listing his crimes, justifying their own murder to prevent more murders.  And Lex couldn't say he was wrong.  One of the only things they really had gotten right, in fact.  If they had acted upon it earlier, it would have saved a lot of lives.  Involuntarily, he saw the image of Mercy's body, sprawled limply across the broken ground, blood and ashes mingling in equal portions.  Lex glanced away from his memory, looking to see if Clark was still watching him.  Instead, Clark had turned his head, focusing his gaze intently upon a wall.  Lex was willing to bet the irises had shaded to blue, and wasn't that just perfect.  *His* execution, and Clark would leave him to rescue somebody else.  Not that Clark had ever saved him, not really, not where it mattered.  Lex pinched his lips together, determined not to say anything.

"If there's a cat up a tree, shouldn't you go help it down?" Okay, so maybe his reflexes were a bit stronger than his intentions.

Clark jerked, turning back to him.  But it was Wonder Woman who answered, lowering a hand from her headset.  "Superman and Green Lantern have it covered.  You don't need to worry about the cats, Luthor."

And for a moment there, Lex had almost forgotten about things like secret identities and covers. And from the look of surprise on his face, Lex thought Clark had as well. It was a good thing Diana was there to cover them.  Lex might hate Superman with his last breath, but he didn't want to see Clark's mom hurt. Lex shook his head.  "The needs of the many."

"Lex..." Clark's voice shook. 

Impatiently, Lex jerked his head in a negating gesture, cutting off whatever Clark was going to say.  He didn't want to hear it.  Not now, minutes before his death.  "Warden, are you ready yet?"

The warden frowned, unhappy about how Lex had taken control of his own proceedings, but it was his own fault for letting it happen.  "Luthor, you have the option to make a final statement, if you wish."

Wish, or want? Lex thought it might be fun to go down as a silent enigma, but that would leave his final statement as either 'are you ready' or 'no' and neither was a good quote.  He looked straight into the camera that was filming his execution.  "Superman, I said I would destroy you, and I have.  Look around you; look carefully, and see what has been done for you, in your name.  There are worse things than having the world's super villains organized."  It was weak, but he was a little disconcerted still by Clark's presence.  He'd had a whole slew of prepared remarks for the politicians, the crimelords, the spandex crowd, the villains, the ones caught in the cross-fire, the provocateurs on the side, the reporters, the jailors, the doctors, the executioners.  He abandoned it all in favor of something else.

"Dying with our world; is it fate or is it choice?"  The Krypontian words slid smoothly off his tongue, a true pronunciation that he'd spent years learning, though never used until now.  The poem itself had been etched into a sheet of diamond that had survived the explosion and spun around in space until he'd picked it up.  He had no doubt it was written by a non-survivor.  It was also much more elegant in Kryptonian – the English translation sucked, in both meter and meaning.  "Some would say choice.  I say fate.  We stand here watching it break, watching our loved ones die, watching ourselves die.  And still, I say, my planet, my planet, I love thee, I mourn thee.  Would I abandon you, if there was choice?  I do not know, and I say fate.  I will die, with thee, for choice that is fate."  Seriously sucked, in English.  But Clark had understood the Kryptonian.  Pale, shaken, his hand resting again upon the glass. He was going to break through if he wasn't careful.  There were tears under the frames. 

It was good enough.  Lex nodded at the woman holding the syringe, and she obediently slid the needle in.  He glanced up again to meet Clark's gaze as the cool liquid flowed into his veins.  One breath.  Two.  Three.  And the world dissolved away in golden sparkles.

Literally dissolved away, and then reassembled into something very different.  Before Lex could make sense of his new surroundings, he fell a few feet to the ground, landing on cold stone with a jar that hurt his broken leg.  Which was no longer in its cast.  And he wasn't wearing clothes, or chains, or... 

"It worked."

Lex looked up to meet the very surprised gaze of a man in a white lab coat, standing in front of a very elaborate set of machinery. 

"Mik!  El!  It worked!  It worked!"  The accent was distorted, strange, but recognizable after a second as a variation on English.  A door in the strange workshop opened and Lex glanced that way to see a young woman, still in her teens, come in.

"Da," her voice was horrified, "What have you done?!"

And that's when the injection took hold.  Pain spiked horribly, firing every nerve in a line through his body.  He screamed, involuntarily arching, thrashing to do something, anything, to be rid of this pain.  Lex had been through torture before, and had kept his cool throughout the most horrendous things they'd done.  This was worse.  He screamed again, cracking his head against the ground, breaking his leg again, barely noticing the additional damage in the face of the poison eating at his cells.  Weren't lethal injections supposed to come with tranquilizers?  That was probably Lex's fault, his body was so screwed up to normal reactions.  It figured he'd have trouble with death as well.

"Help him!"  Hands tried to stabilize him and were thrown off.  There were several people around him now, but Lex was loosing the ability to process anything but the pain.

It was with some relief when awareness itself slipped away.

... ... ...

  


A new world, and an old one, mixed together in weird dichotomies that reminded him of 21st century London.  Castles next to skyscrapers, old churches huddled below shiny apartment complexes.  That's what London had been.  This, though, was Chicago.  It had been a major city in his own world, his own time.  Now? Now it was a slum on the side of the *real* city next to it.  You could see NewChic from the pier, just on the curve of the lake, all shiny spun towers and curves of connectors.  Old Chico (as it apparently had been reduced to), had some of the connectors bridging those large structures that still existed, but they hadn't bothered rebuilding new towers.  Well, not so much 'bothered' as 'couldn't', while the remaining citizens waited for the radiation from AstroBand's last fight with Arganhammer to fade. And when it had, they'd moved on, leaving the remnants to move in.

Lex dialed his bubble-walk back up to a higher setting and took a step.  The world flashed by, speeding around him, slow enough for him to know where he was going and to see some details, but too fast for him to focus on any of them.  Within a few minutes, he'd 'walked' his way to Central City.  He turned the ratio back to a 1 to 1 and spent some time exploring.  This city had fared much better.  Apparently due to a succession of 'Flash' personas who looked after it.  The villains had come with it as well, so there was the usual collateral damage, though nothing as severe as AstroBand's last battle, and Central City had always rebuilt.  This felt more like London, with the proper mixes and well-maintained. 

The Flash museum was still there.  If not the original one he knew, a version of it.  Lex entered it, decoupling the bubble-walk as he did so and putting the collapsed sphere in his pocket.  There were some citizens who spent almost their whole lives in their bubbles, changing the ratios as they desired and only coming out when they absolutely had to.  He likened it to the computer game worlds of his own time, though slightly more useful.  The bubble-walks were the new cars of this century, invented by somebody trying to replicate superpowers, and letting it out to the public.  Lex privately thought they were a bit more like seven-mile-boots, but he'd received only blank stares when he'd mentioned that to the Wiks.  Even archives only were good for historical, and not what remained in the current conscious memories of a race.

Language had survived better.  After 200 years, normally there would have been a major shift.  But television and digital formatting had preserved the main languages almost intact, other than the usual shifts of new words replacing older ones.  The first time he looked something up on the web (which was still the same), Elxa had told him to 'gogit'.  He rather thought that the inventors of google would be amused to know just how entrenched the word had become and how it had changed over the years. 

There was a hologram of the early Flash standing next to Green Lantern and Wonder Woman, and Superman.  Lex studied it, careful to keep his expression clear, and timing how long he could linger.  The Wik family knew roughly from what time period he'd come from; the time machine that Hal had built was calibrated for it.  But Lex was so far being careful not to let them know just *who* he was.  He wasn't sure yet how well he'd succeeded – it was a family of geniuses, after all.  So far, though, none of them had made an issue of it.  They had let him go on this cross-country trip by himself, with only some pleading from the teenagers to accompany him.  That didn't mean, however, that he wasn't being watched.  What in his day would have been unconscionable privacy violations, these people took for granted.  His dialer tracked his every move and sent regular updates to anybody on his list.  It wasn't even Big Brother – it was the youth from his day growing up with twitter and iphone and knowing so much of what went on in their and their friend's lives that they saw no point to ever being off the grid.  And they passed it on to *their* children, and they to theirs, and now, most citizens just took it for granted.  There were ways to foil that, and teenagers being teenagers everywhere knew perfectly well how to set up conflicting signals and masking signals and how to be in twenty places at the same time… but he thought he would save those for another time.

Glancing a last time at Superman's image, Lex moved on through the museum.  200 years, and all the superheroes he'd known were gone.  New ones had emerged.  And new villains.  The meta-human genes had spread until most people had at least one or two odd powers, though most of them weren't powerful enough to rise to the top of the super-pile.  Surprisingly, it didn't actually disadvantage 'normal' humans all that much.  Some of the most secure jobs were reserved for those people who could prove they couldn't do anything.  Some of the most menial as well, but wasn't that always the way of things?

Superman had been killed 120 years ago, in a cosmic battle.  Of course, he'd also been killed 140 and 180 years ago too, but the difference was that he'd never come back from the one 120 years ago.

Lex walked out of the museum and glanced at the sky.  He could hit one or two more cities before he had to settle for the night.  He'd been on the road now for three days, and tomorrow he felt he might be safe enough to visit his goal.  He'd avoided searching on anything directly related to Metropolis and LuthorCorp, but in a trip like this, he could safely check on it, as long as he didn't linger.  With, perhaps, one other stop before he got there. 

  


Corn.  Lex automatically dialed down to a 3:1.  This was real corn.  Well, not the modern corn, anyway.  He supposed it would be antique corn, only good for heritage crops and recreation acts.  He hadn't expected to see it here, in the middle of what had been Kansas.  The other major crop lands that he'd wandered through had adapted with the times, raising the modern equivalent of vegetables and fruits.  Meat, mostly, was genetically engineered, and cows lived in zoos.  But even 200 years hadn't found a good replacement for actually growing plants.  He dialed to a 1:1 and stopped for a moment along the road.  A few bubbles whipped by him, ratios set to their highest levels.  Who, after all, wanted to browse along a crop field for scenery?  Lex pushed a hand out of the bubble, reaching for the corn, and he received a mild shock as his hand passed over the border of the road.  These crops were protected, then, with a warning for those who did idle by.  Probably it was set more to discourage prankers, rather than anybody really wanting to steal it.  Or to keep people from setting up wooden crosses and tying farmboys up on them.  Lex shook his head.  That was 200 years ago.  He might be standing where Smallville used to be, but that didn't mean it had lasted that long.  Though the corn apparently had.  Lex gave it a last curious glance and then dialed up and moved on.

He stopped abruptly, the bubble barely adapting to the sudden stillness.  Lex had wondered for awhile if his trip 200 years in the future was just the deranged dreams of a dying convict.  That theory was currently gaining a lot of ground.  Otherwise, there was no reason, no reason at all, for the buildings he saw to be standing there.  He took a step forward, and cursed when he found himself almost on the doorstep of the house.  Quickly, he dialed the bubble down, and then stripped it off.  He didn't need, or want, to speed through this dream. 

Light brown-beige siding.  White molding.  A cute little white picket fence along the porch.  Plants hanging from the overhang.  Lex backed up until he was well away from the house.  The two story house… First story typical colonial build, circa 1900, second story circa 1950.  Lex fought for breath, for reason, for something to tell him he wasn't going insane and this wasn't staring him in the face.  In his pocket, he gripped the bubble sphere tightly, the only tangible reminder of his future trip.  Slowly, he turned around.  There, in all its red glory, was the barn.  The paint was even a little weathered and the boards worn.  He shook his head.  This wasn't possible.  But he approached it anyway.

He supposed, realistically, that the barn should have gotten his attention first, but barns in Kansas were a dime a dozen.  Or used to be.  *This* barn, on the other hand… this one he knew quite well.  Or used to.  There had been a time once, when he'd been over to it at least once a week.  The house had always been slightly forbidden territory, except for that one time when he'd been granted sanctuary.  The barn, on the other hand… or more particularly, the loft.  Lex's hand trembled as he touched the open barn door, not entirely sure if he had the courage to go in.

"These grounds are protected, you shouldn't be here."

Lex froze.  He froze, his whole body stilling, waiting, aching…

From behind him, a sigh, and the sound of footsteps coming closer.  "I'm sorry, but you're going to have to---"

Lex turned around and looked across the distance to wide green eyes.  The rich black hair was longer, shoulder-length, combed into the tangles of current fashion.  The clothing was also modern.  But the eyes… the eyes were the same forest green they'd always been.  The same color he'd been staring into as his world had dissolved away.

"Lex…" Clark breathed, disbelief in his voice, and something else, something more.

A memory took ahold of Lex then, and he stepped forward.  "It was almost worth being pulled out of my time and displaced 200 years in the future, in order to see your face right now."  He'd never thought to ever see Clark look at him like that again.  Not with *gladness* and affection mixed in with the disbelief and wonder.

Clark blinked, apparently not remembering.  Lex wasn't actually even sure he'd heard him.

"Clark," he tried instead.

A second later, he was being held, tightly and securely, while a familiar voice whispered his name over and over again, interspersed with various thanks to deities.

Stunned, Lex remained still, contained within the strong arms, not struggling as he tried to grasp the implications of what was happening.  Theory number one: he was insane, the death drugs had destroyed his mind and his mind was casting up random things to try and cope with it.  Theory number two: this was actually happening; 200 years in the future and it was *Superman* who had gone insane instead of him.  Lex couldn't actually come up with a theory number three.  It was just all too weird.  He loosened his grip around Clark and wondered just when he'd returned the hug.  It must have been a reflex from back in the days when they'd been young.  Clark, though, showed no inclination to let *him* go.

Starting to panic, Lex knew only one thing, he had to get away from this.  "Let me go!"  He pushed ineffectively at the body of steel.  "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Surprisingly, he was released almost instantly, with just a hand still on his shoulder to steady him.  Lex patted himself smooth, carefully not looking up while he regained his composure.  When he was ready, he looked up with a glare.  Only to met rueful green eyes.

"I'd forgotten."

Curiosity was one of his sins.  "What did you forget?" Lex remembered to get the sneer in there, as he settled back into his role.

Superman, however, didn't return to his.  Clark smiled gently, "I'd forgotten about the anger.  That we'd been enemies."  He reached a hand up and touched Lex's cheek gently.

"You forgot?!"  Lex's voice spiraled up on the last and he clamped his mouth shut before he revealed anything else.  Clark might have forgotten about the anger, but Lex's was rapidly returning.  Arrogant prick…  He brushed Clark's hand off with enough force to bruise a normal person.

Clark shook his head, "Lex, it's been two hundred years.  I…" he hesitated, "I have forgotten a lot, over the years."

Apparently, Superman had *lived* those two hundred years that Lex had jumped over.  Didn't die, despite the news reports.  And yes, memories could get muddled during that much time, even with perfect recall, but… "Superman would have remembered the hatred.  Villain, remember?  Executed for my crimes against humanity?"

"Yes, you would think that, wouldn't you?"

There was a barb somewhere in there, but the words had been so mildly spoken…  Lex was still thinking of a good rejoinder when a hand was held out to him.

"Come on."

Lex stared at the open hand as if it was a poisonous snake.  It was a broad hand, calloused as if through farm work and much time spent outdoors, as impossible as that was.  Lex wondered how Clark managed that.

"Come inside, Lex." When Lex didn't respond, Clark reached out and took a hold of Lex's hand, pulling him gently along.  "Apparently, we have a lot to talk about."

That was certainly true.  But what was it with all the *touching*?  Was that something that had been in vogue recently?  Lex hadn't noticed it with the Wik family, but then, they were eccentric geniuses, and he shouldn't completely model modern behavior after them.  Though the two teenagers had seemed normal enough.  Nobody in his recent wanderings had displayed this tendency either, with the usual exceptions of couples and lovers.  And wasn't that just a peachy thought.  Lex stumbled over the steps up the porch, Clark's grip steadying him at the same time as it was freaking him out.  Clark finally let go of him to open the door and gesture him in.  Not having a better option, Lex obeyed, though he tried to move like it was his own idea.

Once inside the house, Lex was instantly distracted, though a part of his mind kept track of where the alien was.  He circled, prowling around the dining room, the family room, into the kitchen, back to the entry…  It was wrong.  He couldn't pinpoint it, but it was just wrong.  Eerily so.  Lex ended up finally back in the kitchen, standing still while he tried to figure out just what it was that was so very, very wrong.

"Didn't I get it right?" Clark's voice sounded uncertain, a little hesitant.  "I thought for sure… ." He trailed off, with an unhappy silence.

Lex turned to look at him, then studied the house again with new eyes.  The house hadn't stood for 200 years.  It probably hadn't even stood for 50, the way things happened in Smallville.  At some point in the recent past, Clark had *recreated* it.  He'd called upon old memories, photographs, archives, whatever else he could get his hands on, and managed to create a museum piece.  But it wasn't a home.  It wasn't the same Kents where Martha had baked with such regularity it was ingrained in the kitchen walls and Jonathan had gotten oil grease spilled on the family room floor, where Clark himself had dented the dining room table, not to mention the support beam.  It wasn't where the Kents had *lived*.  Lex let out a small sigh of his own.  He didn't *want* to feel sorry for his enemy.  But this had no life in it. And that just wasn't right.

He opened cabinets in the kitchen and found the right dishes and pans.  The refrigerator was stocked with food, though it was only an old-fashioned refrigerator on the outside – the inside was modern and a little weird in this old kitchen, like suddenly opening a door to another dimension.  Lex tried the faucets and was surprised when clear water actually came out.  He took a sip, expecting that Clark would tell him if it was poison.  But Clark stayed silent and the water was good.  It had the faint mineral taste of a well, but not overwhelmingly.  After washing his hands, Lex got out flour, salt, sugar… what the hell did this century use for butter and vegetable oil?  He found the equivalents, or what he thought were the equivalents, and measured them out for a crust.  Thrusting the bowl over to Clark, he said, "Mix that," and then moved on to the main pie ingredients. 

Clark laughed, a low, easy sound.  "I thought that I was having a dream, but now I'm tempted to believe it's real."

Lex snorted.  He wasn't sure himself if this was real.  200 years in the future - now *that* was believable, compared to this.  "'Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.'"

There was a silence from the side that was rich and weighted.  Lex didn't want to turn to look, but he couldn't resist more than a few minutes.  When he finally gave in, he was greeted with the full blast of Clark's attention, regard, and pride. Something he hadn't had since they were young.  It was overwhelming in the intensity, and he found himself retreating, withdrawing, physically still there, but he couldn't, he just couldn't do this.

As if sensing his unease, Clark returned his attention to the crust mix, pulling the dough out to a board and starting to roll it.  "Lex Luthor, baking a pie in my mother's kitchen and quoting philosophy while doing it.  I can't *dream* something this odd, so it must be real."

That stung.  Lex *had* done it, many many years ago, with Martha at his side.  Admittedly, Clark had been in school at the time and so never saw him do it.  But it was one of his rare and precious memories, and he didn't appreciate it being laughed at.  So he lashed back, "This is NOT Martha's kitchen! This is some hack-job replacement copy, that you cobbled together.  It has nothing of your mother in it!"  Lex almost spat on the floor, but he couldn't quite bring himself to go that far. He contented himself with a virulent glare.

Clark paused in rolling out the dough, his hands resting on the roller, his body still.  Finally, he looked up.  Instead of the pain and return anger Lex had expected, the green eyes showed nothing but calm and thoughtful reflection, with a hint of an apology.  "Mom cooked your pie herself, you know."

"What?"

"Your last meal, your requested apple pie.  Mom cooked it, and told me…" Clark turned his head briefly so he was looking out the kitchen window instead of directly at Lex.  "She asked me to forgive you, and to send her love.  I didn't, that last day.  I've always regretted that."

Lex turned to get a knife to start chopping apples.  The sharp blade glinted at him, mocking him, mocking what his life had become.  Was this some sort of a Dickens' play he was in?  Would he next be visited by the ghosts of his past and present?  Unless this was his past and his future was yet to come.  Or unless Dickens had written a totally different play and everything was all mixed up.  "I knew whose pie it was.  The message was delivered."  He managed to keep his voice steady, a fairly major accomplishment, and not just from the memory of the feelings, but also from the revelation Clark had just shown him.

There had been no holding back; Lex'd used the sharpest verbal blade he'd had, and the Clark Kent he had known would have reacted, would have been hurt and would have lashed back in kind until they were both screaming at each other hurling threats and accusations until one of them flew off in a huff.  In Clark's case, literally.  This was not the world he had left, and it wasn't the same Clark Kent.

At some point, in those 200 years, Clark had grown up.  Six months ago, 200 years ago, when they were sparring inside the prison, trading barbs, Lex had still thought of Clark as a boy.  And Clark had still reacted as one, even at 32 years old.  Being forced into a superhero role so young, Clark had never really gotten beyond some of those annoying teenager traits of his, and he'd never stopped feeling guilty for too many things.  Lex had constantly used that, poking at those holes, prying at the edges.  Not very admirable on his part, but then, he was a Luthor, and that's what Luthors did.  They found the weak spots and they exploited them.  Clark, for all his Superman persona, used to have a lot of weak spots.  Now?  Lex wasn't sure about now.  The ones he'd known about weren't there anymore.  There probably were new ones – nobody was perfect.  But he would have to find them anew.  If he survived this encounter.  This adult version of Clark was disturbing.  He didn't know what to do with this future Clark, or what this Clark wanted from him... and that was even more disturbing.

Clark handed him the pie pan with dough lining the inside, and a layer left out for the cover.  Lex put the filler in, and then arranged the top, concentrating on the air slits and making them precise but not too precise.  One had to remember to leave the human element.  The cinnamon and sugar coating went on top.  And then he turned to the oven.  And stopped.

It was like the refrigerator, in that it was a 'modern' oven in the façade of a 21st century one.  And yet.  It was an *oven*, dammit.  "How the fuck can they change an OVEN?"  It was pretty much the simplest of technologies; that hadn't changed since 3200 BC.  You warm up an area, stick something in, and let it cook.  20th century had added temperature controls and automatic timers.  What else was there?  Seriously?

Clark peered over his shoulder, pulling down the faceplate of the façade to check out the modern dials.  "I've never used one," he confessed, while poking randomly at a button.

Lex slapped his hand away, "Do you *want* to blow us all up?"  He studied the array of controls, in horror. "Gods…"  There was only one thing left to do.  With an indrawn breath to steady himself, Lex punched the '?' button in the upper right corner.  A holographic display of instructions appeared before them. 

After another ten minutes of huddled consultation, they finally figured it out (or thought they had) and put the pie in to bake.  Lex wearily sat down at the dining room table with a sigh and a curse.  "An oven.  It's a God-damn Oven, not a particle accelerator!"

Strong hands rested on his shoulders and started gently kneading them.  Lex knew he shouldn't, but he couldn't help relaxing back into them.  It had been a long time since he trusted anybody enough to get a massage.  He missed Hilda, sometimes.  Or was it Olga?  He forgot things too, and for him, it had only been 20 years, not 200.

"If you've never used an oven, does that mean you don't eat?"

Clark snorted, "It means I don't cook.  Much.  Or didn't you notice all the sandwich items in the 'fridge?"

"But you can't die from it, so why would you bother?"

"Not dying isn't the same as not starving."  The hands digging into tense muscle paused for a moment.  "I've done it before.  Gone so long without food that my belly was cramping and my nerves were shaking and I couldn't think for the hunger.  I didn't die, but it sure wasn't fun, and I wouldn't say I was in top fighting condition either."  The massage resumed.  "Flash's stockpile of canned peaches and spam never looked so good in my life, as when I got back."

And that had been an answer.  A real, genuine answer.  Free and easy, with no hesitation and no reserves.  Of course, there was nobody left to protect anymore.  Or was there?  Clark may have put Superman behind, but that didn't mean he'd left the world.  Lex just couldn't see Clark completely solitary all the time.  Sure, he liked to get away, but he always returned to the masses, putting himself into their midst, soaking up their normalcy and their basic lives, untroubled by the greater concerns.

Lex twisted out from under the enticing hands and moved on through the room.  He stopped Clark when Clark would have straightened the chair he'd just left, and instead left it slightly askew from the table.  He ran a flour-coated finger under the ridgeline, where a towel wipe would have missed it.  He tilted one of the pictures; not severely, but just barely, so a normal eye would think it mostly straight. 

In the family room, he made the same little adjustments, a tweak here, one there.  There was still something missing…  "Do you have a flannel shirt?  One of the outer wear ones?"

Clark had been following him silently around, not quite obtrusive but there, the focus of his attention something constantly felt.  There was a brief blur and then he was back, holding out a familiar looking red patterned shirt.

Taking it, Lex tried not to cringe.  This was just... wrong.  All of it.  He was here in the Kents' home (even if it wasn't), Clark was using his powers freely around him, and he was holding a red flannel shirt.  He tossed it over the arm of the couch, letting it crease by the air as it came down.  Both the Kent males in the house had always done that, no matter how much Martha had scolded them for it.  She was a good housekeeper, but she was also a realistic wife and mother, and they had loved her well for it. 

"Light the fire," he ordered.  Might as well use the superhero as long as he was here.

Green eyes regarded him warmly and fondly before they turned to the fireplace and the stack of wood neatly inside it.  The iris shaded to blue, growing paler and lighter as the air shimmered in an inferior mirage.  The wood burst into flame.  The eyes remained blue, darkening somewhat but not yet shifting back, an indication that the alien still held his powers ready.

"Okay, now extinguish it."

Clark looked at him in surprise, the blue eyes shading quickly back to green. 

"It's eighty degrees outside.  I don't want a fire; I just don't want a pile of perfect wood."

"Um…" Clark regarded the merrily burning fire with some dubiousness.

"Are you telling me that in 200 years, you don't have control of your powers?"   That actually was a surprise.

There was a look of concentration on Clark's face as his eyes shaded back to blue, and he replied absently, "Things usually need *more* power, not less.  I don't have a lot of practice in 'subtle'."

"You never did."  Lex couldn't help that one, it just slipped out.  As Clark flashed him a quick grin, Lex berated himself silently for encouraging him.

Clark squatted close to the fire and then breathed out, a similar distortion in the air appearing though this one a superior mirage and lasting longer.  The fire retreated, shrinking back against the cold but still defiantly burning.  Then it was out.  Lex blinked, trying to figure out what Clark had done.  Clark straightened up, keeping his hands away from the edges of anything.  Hands covered with ash.  Lex sighed.  It might have been the easiest solution, but somehow putting a fire out by patting it didn't seem very… elegant.  But it was, after all, very Clark.

Another blur and Lex heard water running in the kitchen.  He looked around the room, trying to see what else needed to be done.  Clark rejoined him silently.

Jonathan also usually had a project or two sitting on the side, unobtrusively but there for him to take up when he wanted to.  Lex would probably find something out in the barn... but he didn't want to go out there.  The barn held many more memories, and was, at this moment, a lot scarier than the house.  He couldn't think of the *names* of any of those bits and pieces, though.  Well, there was always one other thing... Lex quirked a mocking grin at himself.  "Fetch me a shotgun.  With a cleaning rag."

This time, Clark paused a moment before he blurred off.  Lex didn't know what he was thinking, and didn't want to speculate.  He had enough to think about, and more that he was putting off.  Too many new things kept popping up for him to adequately process all of it.  He was taking care of the surface items, but the bigger ticket ones such as 'what to do about the future alien' kept moving to the back burner.  And he was being distracted by memories.  Being here inside this house, thinking of what it had been like... Lex wished they could have met again on a more neutral ground.  This house gave the advantage to Clark.  But at the same time... he didn't want to leave.  Not yet, not while he was *allowed* to be here.

When Clark returned and handed the gun over, Lex broke the barrel and handed the shells to Clark.  Then he dismantled the gun and spent a little time cleaning it.  There had been a time, that first year in particular, that Jonathan had made sure he had a gun in hand or near to hand whenever Lex'd come by.  And the thing of it, was that Lex couldn't now say that Jonathan was wrong.  Knowing what Clark was, it was *dangerous* for him to be friends with a Luthor, any Luthor, no matter how good Lex's intentions at the time were.  Lex had brought him out to Metropolis, where Clark was promptly tagged by Phalen.  Lex had refused to go home, which brought Lionel out to Smallville.  Lex spent huge amounts of money helping Clark and his friends, and all of it brought more and more outside attention on them, forcing the Kents into more lies and more attempts to cover and protect themselves – which none of them were well suited for.  All Lex had wanted was a friend, but it had led to them being enemies instead.

Lex put the shotgun pieces down on the end-table, folding the cleaning rag with the grease on the inside.  The funny thing about the shotgun, is that it had rarely made an appearance after the first year.  After Desiree. And Lex had figured out that the shotgun had nothing to do with the 'Luthor' and a hell of a lot more to do with the occasional talks he'd gotten where Jonathan had emphasized Clark's age.  Lex quirked a grin at that memory. That had taken him by surprise. And so he'd promptly gone out looking for another girlfriend.  Not business like Victoria, but a real one.  Which had led, disastrously, to Helen.  But before that fell apart, it had made his life with the Kents much, much easier.  Jonathan hadn't nearly been as spooked by the friendship, while Lex had a real girlfriend in the wings.

"It looks a lot better."  Clark sat down on the couch next to Lex, who had to fight the urge to move away.  "I guess I was concentrating so much on getting it perfect, that I forgot to make it 'home'."  Clark didn't move closer, but that intensity was back in his gaze again as his voice lowered, "And, of course, you're here now too."

Demons couldn't have gotten Lex off that couch any faster.

"Are you out of your mind?!"  What the fuck was up with this idiot?  "Villain, here!  Superman's worst enemy, remember?  Executed for crimes against humanity!  I was convicted on eight charges of first degree murder, and those were just the convictions!  They were even *right* on seven of them!"  Lex paused for just a moment, wondering if this whole thing might have been an elaborate hologram way to get him to record his confession.  But even if it was, he just didn't care right now.

The pause had given his enemy a chance.  "Seven? What happened with the eighth?" Clark wondered.

"Self-defense," Lex replied shortly.  "That's not the fucking point!  Hello?  Sageeth and Naman?  Mortal enemies?!"

Clark snorted, "Those caves were such bullshit."

Caught in the middle of his tirade, Lex stood with his mouth open, unable to process what he'd just heard.

"They were."  With a shake of his head, Clark stretched out lengthwise on the couch.  "If there's anyone in this whole tale that was insane, that would be my biological father.  I have to wonder if it was because of his defiance in sending me away that broke him, or if he was just like that from the start.  But mystical cave paintings?  Destiny?  God, I got so sick of that stuff…  He wasn't even consistent in all the messages and shit he tried to get me to do."  Clark leveled a gaze at him from where he lay, "Don't even try and tell me that *you* believed it.  That was just something that you just used to get my goat."

Lex opened and closed his mouth a few times.  Actually… no, he didn't.  Not really.  Mostly, he was pissed off that *Clark* believed it.  Or had.  Clark had been such a gullible kid.  Always believing everybody except Lex.  And he'd just totally been derailed, hadn't he?  On the most trivial point he'd been making.  This really wasn't the same Clark Kent he'd left.  Narrowing his eyes and meeting the blue gaze, he got back on track.  "I was convicted with only a narrow number of my crimes.  I've experimented on human beings, I've blown up buildings, I've driven who knows how many business people to suicide.  And yes, I've killed.  There is no statue of limitations on murder."

Clark sighed, "200 years ago."

"SIX FUCKING MONTHS AGO!  Are you forgetting just *who* Lex Luthor is?"

"Lex Luthor decided that as long as he had the name, he'd play the game, but that was never all there was to him."  Clark turned to look at the ceiling.  "The law might care, but I don't.  It's been 150 years since I fought for 'Truth, Justice, and the American Way'."  He wiggled his fingers to put air quotes around the phrase as he spoke it.  "Justice is as much a trap as destiny is, though the young heroes will still do their vigilantism since they can't stand to see so many wrongs without doing something about them.  I've seen what too much of that can do, and you were right – there are worse things than having super-villains organized.  Your crimes… are in the past.  And while you were wrong, you were also driven to it."  He shrugged, still without looking over.  "Some people don't have much sense of 'others'.  You used to… and we tore that from you.  Small wonder you went the other direction.  But I think that most of what 'Lex Luthor, Super-Villain' was, was a façade."  The air quotes also went around his name.

It was tempting, very very tempting, to prove him wrong.  Lex ground his teeth.  "You are willing to risk the lives of everybody on this planet for your dream-world?"

Clark swung up so he was sitting on the couch and facing Lex.  "Have you murdered anybody in the last six months?"

Insane.  He really was insane.  Humor the insane alien.  "No," Lex bit out.

"Are you planning on murdering anybody soon?"

"I'm thinking about it.  Where's the nearest stockpile of kryptonite?"

Clark laughed, "I think the current version of the League still has some.  Don't know where they keep it, though.  There might be some in Gotham, buried under Bruce's house."

Who the hell answers a question about your main weakness to your enemy?  Unless it wasn't a weakness anymore.  Lex narrowed his eyes.

"Yes, kryptonite still affects me.  No, we never found a cure that wouldn't also kill me." Clark shrugged, "It seems to be a part of my biology, and there's not much that can be done about that.  Lex, don't you think you've already paid for your crimes?"

Lex looked at him in disbelief.  Other than a few months in jail here and there, the legal system had never really caught up with him, until the end.

One moment, he was looking at Clark on the couch.  The next, Clark was kneeling beside him, rolling up his left sleeve.  Lex tried to jerk away, but Clark held him with super-human strength.  And then loosened. The strong golden hands of a farmer alien traced over Lex's inner forearm, gently sliding up and down.

"You quoted Kryptonian poetry to me, and then you disappeared," Clark whispered, his head bowed over Lex's arm and not looking up.  "They thought it was a magic spell.  But what they didn't remember, almost none of them, was that you disappeared *after* you'd been injected."  Clark kissed Lex's arm, lips lingering on the large vein.  "For how many of these six months were you dying, Lex?"

Magic, it had to have been.  Lex was spell-bound, held not by strength, but by the touch of those lips.  An honest answer wrenched itself out.  "Four months.  Four…"  Lex swayed and would have fallen if Clark hadn't held him.  Sense memories were overwhelming him with the pain.  They had told him it had been four months, but all he'd known was a period in hell.  The poison had nearly killed him time and time again.  It was entirely possible it *had* killed him, and his weird mutant body brought him back.  Most poisons would kill and be gone, dissolving away.  But this one lingered, reacting with his own weird body chemistry until they were tied in a loop. 

Hell had been interspersed with the kind and worried attentions of the family whose lives he'd ended up in.  Until one day, he'd finally woken up and stayed awake.  That had been, according to them, three months.  It was another one after that before he could get up and move without collapsing.  The pain still periodically came in waves, but it had been a week since the last bad one, and Lex had finally insisted on being let out.  And he'd come here.  To this.  "Magic," he whispered, and then everything went black.

  


When he woke up, it was apparently to the same weird dream.  Or nightmare.  He was lying on the couch, his feet shoeless and propped up, a cool wet cloth over his forehead, and an alien sitting by his side.  Lex sighed and closed his eyes.  Only to open them at the weird sound that kept vibrating through his teeth and in his head…  Oh.  "Hand me my coat."

Clark jerked, apparently not having realized Lex was conscious.  Lex smirked a bit at the example of fallibility.  "My coat."

"Lex…" Clark whispered brokenly, before blurring for a second and reappearing with the requested item.  "Don't go," he said, even as he handed the coat to Lex, "Stay here just a bit longer, please."

Lex rolled his eyes.  Some assumptions stayed asinine.  Without getting up, he pulled his dialer out of his coat pocket and answered it, "What?"

"Xander!  Oh, you're okay!  Your heart-rate had been spiking and then it abruptly plummeted, and we just were going crazy.  Ma's close to taking off after you, and Mik is siding with her, but Da and I wanted to check, and gremlins, you're answering the dialer! Does that mean you're okay?  What happened?"

Grimacing, Lex poked at the slim silver bracelet around his wrist.  He knew he should have never accepted any gifts from El, but it wasn't like he could turn it down either.  "I'm fine, El."  And off she went again.  Teenagers.  Lex held the phone… dialer, he meant… away from his ear a little ways.  And accidentally met Clark's eyes which were wide with surprise and not a little amusement.

"Not a word…" Lex growled softly in Kryptonian, his hand over the receiver. He would have thrown in an expletive or two, but none of his language guides had been able to provide any.  Clark clapped a hand over his mouth, his eyes dancing.

After several more minutes, Lex finally resorted to shouting.  "Elxa!  I'm fine!  Okay?  Corral the search parties and haul them in.  No, I'm *not* coming back right now.  No, I *won't* check in every two hours.  But I won't take off your bracelet either, okay?"

There was a brief silence on the other end and Lex rolled his eyes again.  "I'm hanging up now, okay?  No panicking..."

"Did you *meet* somebody?  OMG, you did, didn't you!  Are you staying the night with her?  Him? Hir? It?"

Lex turned off the dialer and tossed it on the end table, sitting up on the couch.

Clark finally started laughing.  In between his mirth, he got out, "I think, Xander, that you just ruined your own argument."

Lex couldn't actually disagree with that.  His weakness had always been those he got attached to.  The rest of humanity could go to hell, but when he actually *liked* people... But it still didn't mean he couldn't be evil to others.

"Elxa, Mikixo, Bantine, Haltiv... and time travel," Clark mused, "You were staying with the Wik family."

The tension which had dropped suddenly ratcheted back up.  Lex stilled, every fiber in his being concentrating on the superhero sitting next to him.  If he had those pieces of kryptonite...

Even a blind person couldn't have missed it, and Clark's intelligence seemed to have improved over the years.  "Lex, I do know that you *can* kill if you need to, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  I'd just rather you don't do it preemptively to people you think *might* be a threat to you and yours."  Clark smiled, blithely unconcerned about any danger. "Relax, Xander.  I told you, I'm not in that business anymore."

Lex ignored the name-bating.  "I don't believe you.  You'd never give up the tights completely.  Not while people still need saving."  Which they always would.

"True enough.  Nowadays, I'm known as the Shadower."

Blinking, Lex ran that through his memory.  There wasn't any Shadower in the records.  Though there were variations on the word... "Shadow Savior?"

Clark flushed red.  "That's not how I introduced myself!  Stupid reporters."

"200 years and you can still blush?"  Lex stood up and had to steady himself. Within a second, Clark was also standing and carefully hovering, trying to be helpful, but mostly getting in the way.  It was true, though.  The reports of the Shadow Savior were that he saved.  Helped people, rescued them... and left.  He didn't ever bring bad guys to justice, or went to trials, wasn't a member of the Legion.  He just... saved.  "What do you do if you come across evil?"  Because nobody *let* the rapists or psychopaths go, as there would promptly just be another victim.

"I tell whichever hero is patrolling that area." Clark finally moved back after Lex was standing straight.  "But Haltiv Wik is more the careless scientist type.  Definitely not evil.  Nominally in Ladybug's territory, he hasn't caused any trouble that I know of for awhile.  Other than pulling the world's worst criminal through a time distortion."

Lex looked around sharply at the 'worst' but Clark's face remained bland.  Still, though, he was sure he'd just been teased.  With a sniff, he chose to ignore it.  "I don't think they'll be using the time machine any more."

Clark looked a question at him.  Lex shrugged, "I never told them about my execution.  They think all that I went through was because of being ripped from my proper time continuum.  They're really, really not very likely to use it again."

Disappointingly, he didn't get the laugh he was expecting.  And when he realized his expectations, Lex berated himself for it.  Clark had grinned briefly, but his mind was obviously on other things.  "Lex, are you sure you're okay?"

"PTSD," Lex replied absently.  From the smell, he thought the pie might be close to done.  If not a bit over done.

"What?" 

Clark looked genuinely puzzled, and Lex realized that that was a term that must have come and gone in a fraction of his long life.  Heck, it had gone through at least four versions just in *his* lifetime.  Clark wasn't the same, and he'd moved past a lot of things that Lex was still going to be holding on to.  "Vivid sense memory of the pain, not actually trauma itself.  I'm just having flashbacks."

"That's a heck of a memory."

"It was a hell of a trauma."

Apparently not able or willing to help himself, Clark moved in close again, reaching to hold Lex in a hug.  Lex tolerated it, breathing in scents of shampoo (some herbal thing), wind (it was a smell that combined many other scents, fresh and sharp), and that masculine musk that was common to XY holders and yet was also Clark's alone.  It had been a long time, a very long time, since Lex had occasion to note it.  "I still think that either you're crazy, or I've wandered into some weird movie set, a horror film," he murmured into the warm shoulder he was pressed into.

A warm breath over his scalp as Clark laughed softly.  Lips rested gently against his skin without pushing further.  Apparently, Clark had figured out some of his limits.  Though just being held like this should have been past a limit already, it really should have been.  But Lex was tired, and this was probably a dream anyhow…

"I've dreamed of this for so long, and I don't even know if this is real now."  As Clark spoke, the words breathed over Lex.  "I'm going to wake up alone again, and the tear in my heart will be even worse for having had you in this dream."

Lex snorted and worked his way out of the hug.  "You haven't had me yet."  And then he realized his slip of the tongue.

A hand touched his cheek gently.  "I don't think I've *ever* seen you blush."  Green eyes danced as the hand fell away, "And the night is yet to come."

"The pie is done."  Lex strode towards the kitchen, the flush getting worse.  Jonathan hadn't been wrong, in those days with the shotgun.  But Clark had been too young (he'd completely agreed with Jonathan on that), and then they were enemies…  The thing he distrusted most about this scenario was how easily it could have been pulled out of his subconscious.  It was all crazy, but crazy in a way he almost wanted.

Pressing the ejector button, he watched the pie slide out through the surface wall and shuddered.  Of all the technologies the future could have mucked with...  Maybe he'd have to retroactively 'invent' a normal oven, because this just wasn't right.  Not right at all.  He reached for oven mitts, but Clark was there before him, picking up the hot tray bare-handed and moving it to the cooling rack.

"It's perfect," Clark said in wonder.

"We don't know that until we get to the inside," Lex warned.  Inside, he wondered if the pie was a metaphor for the dream, his unconscious warning him not to trust this.

"Can you, for once, just go with it?" There was a bit of an impatience in Clark's gaze and voice, the first he'd seen all day.

Lex quirked his mouth.  By nature, he was a pessimist.  Apparently, Clark had forgotten that too.

"What am I saying?  Of course you can't."  Clark huffed out a laugh at himself.  "You know, I promised myself that I would accept you, all of you, without trying to change you again if I ever got the chance.  But you're right – I mostly put in the room the things I *wanted* to remember."

That certainly got Lex's attention.  "The room?"

Another grin, "I also figured out that collecting mementos and things that remind one of another person is not an automatic betrayal."  He held out his hand for Lex's.

After a moment, Lex gave it to him and let himself be guided upstairs.  The upstairs was not like the downstairs, a perfect replica of the Kent house.  Instead, though the rooms were all the in right places, it was more of a showcase, with pictures and vids and grams lining the walls; reminders of a very long life. 

Clark opened the door to what once was his bedroom.  Lex walked in… and found himself.  He turned around in wonder, looking at the pictures on the walls, the newspaper clippings, the things.  His old box was there, and his watch, Clark apparently having retrieved them wherever they'd disappeared to.  There was even on the window a portion of the stained glass from the castle.  He walked through, touching the things that were touchable, avoiding the ones that were so old and fragile they'd break at a touch.  Prominent above the old desk was a picture of them at the Beanery, sitting back at their table, heads bent over some piece of paper, body poses very relaxed and comfortable, casual with how close they were.  Lex didn't touch it, but his heart turned over a bit for something he'd thought was long gone.  They had been so young then.  Clark was, of course, *very* young at 15, but Lex had forgotten how young he himself had been.  21 wasn't really that much older.  And that Lex, as jaded as the 21-year-old had thought himself to be, was still just touching the edges of the horrors to come.

The room, though, really was a one-sided set.  In the newspaper articles displayed, most were the early ones about the formation of LexCorp, the saving of the plant with the buyout, the bringing of the football team in for Whitney, the charity acts he'd done later to balance some of LuthorCorp's publicity.  There were none of the ones Clark himself had written about the evil empire and the bastard who ran it.  The only thing, in fact, that really was indicative of the later years, was a small plastic syringe… laying in front of a rather familiar diamond sheet.  Lex touched the sheet, running his fingers over the etched words.

"I have a recreation of your room somewhere here…" Clark was at the podium, bringing up 'puter images and diagrams, files flashing through of much more than was stored in the room.  "Here.  At least what I could remember of it."

Lex didn't actually know if it was a real representation or not.  He'd tried very hard to forget that room, and in part had been aided by his wonderful father with that little memory wipe.  Those memories were forever gone, though he knew what had happened from his own research.

"What I realized, after doing this, was that your room wasn't about trying to figure out my powers."

Lex raised an eyebrow.  Most of the room *had* had the evidence, the car prominent in it…

"It was about *us*. You saved everything that we'd had or done together, or when what I did affected you too.  You had a ton more evidence about *me*, but the ones in your room were for us."

It had been a little too long, Lex couldn't remember if Clark's version now was correct, or just the wistful revisionist version of somebody who wanted to believe that he had been good.  Lex was inclined to think it wasn't as pure as Clark now thought it was.  But he wasn't all wrong either.

Moving over to the podium, Lex took control, flipping through the directory, amazed at how much was in there.  And here also was the parts not on the wall.  Clark had been, after all, a reporter.  The balance was there, accessible, if not displayed.  Reminders that Lex had not been blameless or the victim, but a willing participant in his descent.

And there.  That's what he'd been looking for.  Lex pulled up the 'gram of the graveyard, focusing on the newest of the tombstones.  "You really did put it on."  The stuff of legends, buried with their dreams.

Clark didn't reply, but he stood close, physically and otherwise. Giving the weight of his attention and thoughts and that other that Lex didn't want to think too much about.

"The date is eight years after."

With a shrug, Clark dismissed it.  "Well, we didn't know if you weren't going to just suddenly reappear again.  God, we *expected* it.  For years, every plot that had a twist, every criminal without a name, every time something was more intelligent than it should have been… I looked for you.  I was jumping at shadows everywhere, thinking you were back, hoping you were.  And it was never you."  Clark sighed.  "One night, I just woke up in the middle of the night, my heart racing, tears streaming… and I just knew you weren't coming back."  The memory in his voice was broken and painful.  Lex couldn't believe he was talking about him.  "I called the warden, and we agreed that it was time."  That translated to 'Superman said so, so therefore it was.'

"How did I die?" Lex wondered, walking into the 'gram and standing in front of his grave.

"Officially, the execution was botched and you'd slipped into a coma.  And then, officially, you just died without ever having woken up."

Lex could see that.  He could picture it happening even now.  Himself lying in a coma in a prison bed (a stupidity itself – they couldn't kill him while he was in a coma?), his mind floating lose, spinning first pain and terror and then switching to this dream.  It would end badly, of course.  The hopeful dreams just the set up for how wrong it would go; the stuff of nightmares.  Or maybe he'd just die, trapped in this dream.  That… wasn't actually a bad way to go.  


His gaze skittered off his newest gravestone and the inscriptions there, and landed on one just next to it.  Lex's breath drew quickly in and then out again explosively.  He took a step over and fell to his knees, reaching out to the name written there, but his fingers passed through.  He closed his eyes.  "You brought her to me."

"I thought she would have wanted it that way.  And I couldn't see separating you."

His last memory of Mercy had been her torn and bloody body, protecting him from the explosion, getting him out while she was the sacrifice.  He'd been arrested immediately after and wasn't able to get back to her.  If there was anything in this world he was grateful to Superman for, it was now for Mercy.  She'd had no home when he'd found her.  Now, she had one nobody could ever take away from her.  He hoped.  "Is it still there?"  This hologram had been taken fairly recently after his 'burial', with the edges sharp and clear, not dulled by time.  200 years…

"The graveyard is intact.  We can visit it, if you like." Clark's presence was reassuring, a strength that supported without overwhelming.  He'd had a lot of practice, over the years.  Lex wondered how much he could feel the deaths anymore, how hard it was to continue to care, time after time.  The superhero that needed to help, but couldn't possibly save everybody.  Especially those who would not be saved.

Lex stood up again, feeling his age.  A fifth of Clark's, and yet still more than some humans' span.  Mercy had been only 26.

"You loved her."

How did one answer a question like that?  Even if it was a statement.  "Not like you loved Lois.  But Mercy was my…" How could he even express what she'd been?  Minion, companion, devoted to his needs.  Substitute for Clark.  He'd rescued her, and though her job was to keep him safe, he'd always counted part of his duties to care for her.  And he'd failed in that, at the end.   "Do you have a room for Lois?"  Lex turned from the grave, to the life, while remembering death.  Lois had been mortal, after all.

Clark turned off the gram and the graveyard faded from around them.  "There are some things across the way.  We were married.  But it's not…" Clark struggled for a moment and then shrugged.  "We had our lives together.  I loved my life with her; it's gone now, but we *had* it."  He took a step towards Lex.  "I've always regretted that we didn't have the same chance."

"They could not have co-existed, those lives."

"No.  But we're not there now."  Clark stepped outside of the room and then turned back to him.  "I think the pie is cooled enough to eat.  Join me?"

He wasn't just talking about the pie.  Lex felt a little put upon the spot, and yet, he had most of the information he needed.  It was just the decision that still awaited.  Either he was in a coma and wouldn't ever wake, in which case he might as well just go for it.  Or he was 200 years in the future with a new life to make.  Frankly, he didn't really want to go back to the old one.  That part was done.  And while he thought Clark was crazy for thinking he could reform the super-villain of the 21st century… there was a part of him that was thankful and hopeful.  Clark's home, the place he'd always wanted to be accepted and a part of, was now open to him, and Clark thought he fit here, he thought they had a chance.

In the end, there wasn't really any other choice.  Lex met the green eyes that he remembered so well from his youth.  And he said 'yes.'  They left the room of memories, and went down together to apple pie.  For him, his execution hadn't been death, it had opened a door to new life.

* * *

  
End

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the '[Twisting The Twilight Zone 2009 Challenge](http://community.livejournal.com/enter_tzone/)' (Episode 1.26: Execution). _("When a 20th century scientist tests out his time machine he accidentally retrieves a 19th century murderer - saving him from the hangman's noose. Unaware of the man's history, the two attempt to acclimatize to their new surroundings.")___
> 
> There is a sequel: [New Life](http://archiveofourown.org/works/56249). Taking the future as real, and exploring the world a bit further. Execution, however, stands on its own and can easily have gone the other way. So if you like the Twilight Zone ending, read New Life only as a possible AU. ^^
> 
> Comments can also be made [at the Livejournal](http://tallihensia.livejournal.com/253708.html?mode=reply) (where all the rest are ^^).


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